Attacking Earth and Sun

Attacking Earth and Sun follows a group of settlers and soldiers throughout the hellish madness that was the colonization of Algeria by France during the 19th century.

Séraphine arrives in Algeria in the 1840s with her husband, her children, her sister and her brother-in-law. She will try to build a French village there and cultivate the earth. But a cholera pandemic will soon ruin efforts to build anything.The other voice of the novel belongs to a soldier in charge of the “pacification” of the country. Both will soon discover the barbarity of what has become their daily lives.

Attacking Earth and Sun is unsparing in its portrayal of the brutality of the French army. When a captain tells his soldiers "You're no angels"; the soldiers proudly reply "That's right, captain, we're no angels".

Macron, the French president, has called France's relationship with Algeria 'a love story that has its tragic side". Mathieu Belezi shows that this is a very perverse love story indeed! A word of mouth success in France, Attacking Earth and Sun has sold over 100,000 copies there. It has been translated into all major European languages.

Mathieu Belezi is the author of more than a dozen novels. His writing career began with Le petit roi, which won the Marguerite-Audoux Prize in 1999. Attacking Earth and Sun has won the Prix Livre Inter and Le Monde Literary Prize. Having traveled widely and even taught in Louisiana, he now divides his time between France and Italy.